During the first centuries after the death of Jesus, as the Christian communities became more organised, issues and disputes arose that required leaders and teachers to clarify the faith. In the work of Irenaeus Bishop of Lyon (ca 115–190), one of the first and foremost of these so- called Church Fathers, there is a distinct sense that he was in touch with Jesus of Galilee and that he was commentating on the very earliest traditions passed on by the apostles.
Irenaeus framed an early formulation of the Trinity with a creation connection. In Book 1 of Against Heresies, Irenaeus wrote that the Church believes “in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God …”736 Edwards quotes Irenaeus: “the Father ‘plans and gives commands,’ the Son ‘performs and creates,’ and the Spirit ‘nourishes and increases’.”737 Here, as with Paul, Irenaeus was linking creation to salvation.
It was Irenaeus who proffered the aphorism of the loving “Father creating the world with his two hands, the Son and the Spirit, the Word and the Wisdom”.738 Irenaeus emphasised the principal role of the Word was to be in creation, and thus seeing salvation as an inevitable consequence of the creation event. H. Paul Santmire, in The Travail of Nature, thus remarks:
Irenaeus then sees the figure of the Incarnate Word who – as the eternal Logos, together with the Spirit of God – is the ever-present life-giving principle of creation history and who – as the Logos become flesh – moves the whole creation decisively toward the goal of fulfilling the original intention of the creation.739
736 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Early Christian Writings, Book 1, Chapter X, paragraph 1,
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/irenaeus-book1.html (accessed March 29, 2018).
737 Edwards, Breath of Life (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2004), 40.
738 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 131.
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Irenaeus’ logic leads him to consider that there would have been a fulfilment of creation “even had Adam not sinned”.740 Irenaeus bases his theology on the Priestly theology that all
of creation is good and the creation of humanity is very good. While it is possible in Paul’s theology to draw the conclusion that the role of Jesus was to be the necessary saviour arriving in salvation history to redeem humanity from sin, as YHWH did at the Red Sea to redeem Israel from Pharaoh’s grasp, Irenaeus holds that the Incarnation occurred without
consideration of the onset of sin in the world. The Incarnation is wired into the architecture of creation and is not the result of human sinfulness, although it addresses sin. It is not an
afterthought or a correction of a flawed creation.
This theology does not imply that Christ is not the redeemer. What it does is demonstrate that in the blueprint of creation the Incarnate Word of God reveals the deep nature of God, a God who cares for God’s good creation from the moment of its birth to its final eschatological end in the unfolding vision of God. In this sense Jesus authentically represents the Cosmic Christ who is the overarching goodness of creation. Following Irenaeus, it became established in the Church that Christ, the Word, was the creator in God and equal in being with God.
Over a century later, Athanasius (ca 296–377) also links the Spirit to the Word and sees the Spirit “participating in the one divine act of creation”.741 A deeper understanding of a
trinitarian God is now emerging. Edwards notes, “For Athanasius, creation is from the Source of All, through the Word and in the Spirit.”742 Athanasius is also responsible for the concept
of communion (koinonia) in God and the view that grace is available to the creation through the Spirit. Patristic theology was thus continuing to develop the revelation that the idea that God has three aspects and is eternally joined in a self-communion.
Another question faced by the early Church was whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from both the Son and Father. The Council of Constantinople declared that “the Holy Spirit was also truly, really, and fully God, stating that the Holy Spirit ‘is Lord and Giver of Life’. He proceeds from the Father. He is worshipped and glorified.”743 The idea of
procession confirms that this continuous creative activity belongs to the nature of God. If the
740 Santmire, The Travail of Nature, location 572.
741 Edwards, Breath of Life, 41.
742 Edwards, Breath of Life, 41.
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Cosmic Christ is to be found in the moment of creation then the Spirit is to be found there also. The implication is that the Cosmic Christ and the Spirit are mutually engaged in the process of ongoing creation.
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) then contributed to a deeper understanding of how the persons in the Godhead related to each other. In De Trinitate, Augustine describes these relationships as “each in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all in all, and all are one”.744 Gregory of
Nazianzus (389–390) introduced the idea of perichoresis into later Patristic thought,
particularly in the Eastern Church, where it was variously used to describe the interpersonal relationships of the three persons of the Trinity as a co-inherence or inter-penetration.745 God is One but is acting in three processions and interacting within God’s-self.
Initially Gregory applied the image of perichoresis to the two natures of Christ to explain how the divine and human natures of Christ could co-exist harmoniously. Later John
Damascene in the 7th century applied the notion to the Trinity where it was used to describe the interpersonal relationships of the three persons as a co-inherence or inter-penetration. Crisp concludes, however, that the term perichoresis in both its applications does not elucidate the nature of God very well because, “This is a divine mystery before which theology must give way to doxology.”746 The Patristic era thus set the foundations for a
theology of the Cosmic Christ within a trinitarian God, with the role of each Person in God becoming more clearly articulated.
744 Hunt, Trinity, 19 (De Trinitate 6.12) and Oliver D. Crisp, “Problems with Perichoresis,” Tyndale Bulletin
56.1 (2005). http://tyndalehouse.com/tynbul/library/TynBull_2005_56_1_07_Crisp_PerichoersisProblems.pdf (accessed July 11, 2018): 119–40. Crisp proposes that although Augustine did not use the term perichoresis his theology of the Trinity suggests perichoresis: “I shall assume an Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity as the model which informs my discussion of person-perichoresis,” 136. Mary T. Clark, “De Trinitate,” Cambridge Companions Online (2006), agrees with this conclusion: “Augustine inferred that the one God is three Persons in such a way that they are one divine Being, yet distinct from one another and dynamically within one another (circumincessio, perichoresis).” https://www2.bc.edu/taylor-black/Master's%20Comps/DeTrinitateSummary.pdf (accessed July 7, 2018).
745 Hunt, Trinity, 16–17, notes 25 and 26 and Crisp, “Problems with Perichoresis,” 130. Crisp opines: “I take it
that nature-perichoresis involves an asymmetrical relation between the two natures of Christ. The divine nature of Christ interpenetrates his human nature without confusion and without being mingled with it. But the human nature of Christ does not interpenetrate the divine nature in any way.”
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